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04 Part 1 - The One and the Many - Pragmatism - William James · Logic Library

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Lecture four, The One and the Many. We saw in the last lecture
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that the pragmatic method, in its dealings with certain concepts, instead of ending
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with admiring contemplation, plunges forward into the river of experience with them and prolongs
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the perspective. By their means, design, free will, the absolute mind,
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spirit, instead of matter, have for their sole meaning a better promise
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as to this world's outcome. Be they false or be they true. The
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meaning of them is this meliorism. I have sometimes thought of the phenomenon called
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total reflection in optics as a good symbol of the relation between abstract ideas and
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concrete realities, as pragmatism conceives it. Hold a tumbler of water a little
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above your eyes and look up through the water at its surface, or better
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still, looks similarly through the flat wall of an aquarium. You will then
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see an extraordinarily brilliant reflected image, say of our candle, flame, or
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any other clear object situated on the opposite side of the vessel. No candle
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ray under these circumstances gets beyond the water's surface. Every ray is totally reflected
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back into the depths. Again. Now let the water represent the world of
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sensible facts, and let the air above it represent the world of abstract ideas.
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Both worlds are real, of course, and interact, but they interact
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only at their boundary and the locus of everything that lives and happens to us,
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so far as full experience goes, is the water. We are like
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fishes swimming in the sea of sense, bounded above by the superior element,
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but unable to breathe it pure or penetrated. We get our oxygen from it,
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however, we touch it incestantly, now in this part, now in
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that, and every time we touch it, we are reflected back into the
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water, with our course redetermined and re energized. The abstract ideas of which
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the air consists indispensable for life, but irrespirable by themselves, as it were,
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and only active in their redirecting function. All seamles are halting, But
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this one rather takes my fancy. It shows how something not sufficient for life
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in itself may nevertheless be an effective determinant of life elsewhere. In this present
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hour, I wish to illustrate the pragmatic method by one more application. I
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wish to turn its light upon the ancient problem of the One and the many.
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I suspect that in but few of you has this problem occasioned sleepless nights.
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And I should not be astonished if some of you told me it had
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never vexed you. I myself have come, by long brooding over it to
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consider it the most central of all philosophic problem. Probs central because so pregnant.
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I mean by this that if you know whether man is a decided monist
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or a decided pluralist, you perhaps know more about the rest of his opinions
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than if you give him any other name ending in ist to believe in the
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one or in the many. That is the classification with the maximum number of
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consequences. So bear with me for an hour while I try to inspire you
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with my own interest in the problem. Philosophy has often been defined as the
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quest or the vision of world's unity. We never hear this definition challenged,
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and it is true as far as it goes, for philosophy has indeed manifested
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above all things its interest in unity. But how about the variety in things?
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Is that such an irrelevant matter? If instead of using the term philosophy,
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we talk in general of our intellect and its needs. We quickly see
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that unity is only one of these. Acquaintance with the details of fact is
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always reckoned, along with a reduction to system as an indispensable mark of mental
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greatness. Your scholarly mind, of encyclopedic philological type, your man essentially of
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learning, has never lacked for praise along with your philosopher. What our intellect
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really aims at is neither variety nor unity, taking singly but totality footnote Compare
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a bellanger less concepts the cause at lactivitt intentionelle de l'esprite, Paris, Alcan,
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nineteen hundred and five, page seventy nine ff. In this, acquaintance
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with realities diversities is as important as understanding their connection. The human passion of
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curiosity runs on all fours with the stomatizing passion. In spite of this obvious
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fact, the unity of things has always been considered more illustrious, as it
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were, than their variety. When a young man first conceives the notion that
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the whole world forms one great fact, with all its parts moving abreast as
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it were, and interlocked, he feels as if he were enjoying a great
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insight, and looks superciliously on all who still fall short of this sublime conception.
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Taken thus abstractly as it first comes to one, the first monistic insight
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is so vague as hardly to seem worth defending intellectually. Yet probably everyone in
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this audience in some way cherishes it. A certain abstract monism, a certain
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emotional response to the character of oneness, as if it were a feature of
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the world, not coordinate with its manyness, but vastly more excitil and eminent.
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Is so prevalent in educated circles that we might almost call it a part
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of philosophic common sense. Of course, the world is one, we say,
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how else could it be a world at all? Empiricists as a rule
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are as stout monists of this abstract kind as rationalists are. The difference is
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that the empiricists are less dazzled. Unity doesn't blind them to everything else,
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doesn't quench their curiosity for special facts, whereas there is a kind of rationalist
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who is sure to interpret abstract unity mystically and to forget everything else, to
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treat it as a principle, to admire and worship it, and thereupon to
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come to a full stop intellectually the world is one. The formula may become
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a sort of number worship three and seven have, it is true, been
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reckoned sacred numbers, but abstractly taken, Why is one more excellent than forty
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three or than two million and ten? In this first vague conviction of the
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world's unity, there is so little to take hold of that we hardly know
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what we mean by it. The only way to get forward with our notion
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is to treat it pragmatically. Granting the oneness to exist, what facts will
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be different in consequence? What will the unity be known as the world is
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one? Yes? But how one? What is the practical value of the
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oneness? For us asking such questions, we pause from the vague to the
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definite, from the abstract to the concrete. Many distinct ways in which oneess
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predicated of the universe might make a difference come to view. I will note
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successively the more obvious of these ways. One. First, the world is
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at least one subject of discourse. If its menness were so irremediable as to
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permit no union whatever of its parts, not even our mind could mean the
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whole of it at once. There would be like eyes trying to look in
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opposite directions. But in point of fact, we mean to cover the whole
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of it by our abstract term world or universe, which expressly intends that no
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part shall be left out. Such unity of discourse carries obviously no farther monistic
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specifications. A chaus one so named has so much unity of discourse as a
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cosmos. It is an odd fact that many monists consider a great victory scored
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for their side. When pluralists say the universe is many, the universe,
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the chuckle his speech bewrayeth him. He stands confessed of monism out of his
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own mouth. Well, let things be one in that sense. You can
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then fling such a word as universe at the whole collection of them. But
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what matters it It still remains to be ascertain whether they are one in any
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other sense that is more valuable. Two are they, for example? Continuous?
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Can you pause from one to another, keeping always in your one universe
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without any danger of falling out? In other words, do the parts of
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our universe hang together instead of being like detached grains of sand? Even grains
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of sand hang together through the space in which they are embedded. And if
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you can in any way move through such space, you can pause continuously from
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number one of them to number two. Space and time are thus vehicles of
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continuity by which the world's parts hanged together. The practical difference to us resultant
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from these forms of union is immense. Our whole motor life is based upon
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them. Three. There are innumerable other paths of practical continuity among things.
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Lines of influence can be traced by which they together. Following any such line,
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you pause from one thing to another till you may have covered a good
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part of the universe's extent. Gravity and heat conduction are such all uniting influences
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so far as the physical world goes. Electric, luminous, and chemical influences
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follow similar lines of influence. But upaq and inert bodies interrupt the continuity here,
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so that you have to step round them or change your mode of progress
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if you wish to get farther on that day. Practically, you have then
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lost your universe's unity so far as it was constituted by those first lines of
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influence. There are innumerable kinds of connection that special things have with other special
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things, and the ensemble of any one of these connections form one sort of
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system. By which things are conjoined. Thus, men are conjoined in a
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vast network of acquaintanceship Brown nose, Jones, Jones knows Robinson, et cetera.
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And by choosing your father intermediaries rightly, you may carry a message from
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Jones to the Empress of China, or the chief of African pigmies, or
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to any one else in the inhabited world. But you are stopped short,
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as by a non conductor, when you choose one man wrong. In this
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experiment, what may be called love systems are grafted on the acquaintance system.
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A loves or B, B loves or hates, c et cetera. But
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these systems are smaller than the great acquaintance system that they presuppose. German efforts
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are daily unifying the world more and more in definite systematic ways. We found
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colonial, postal, consular, commercial systems, all the parts of which they
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obey definite influences that propagate themselves within the system, but not to facts outside
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of it. The result is innumerable little hangings together of the world's parts within
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the larger hangings, together little worlds not only of discourse but of operation within
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the wider universe. Each system exemplifies one type or grade of union, its
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parts being strung on that peculiar kind of relation, and the same part may
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figure in many different systems, as a man may hold several offices and belong
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to various clubs. From this systematic point of view, therefore, the pragmatic
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value of the world's unity is that all these definite networks actually and practically exist.
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Some are more enveloping and extensive, some less. So they are superposed
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upon each other, and between them all they let no individual elementary part of
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the universe escape enormous, as is the amount of disconnection among things. For
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these systematic influences and conjunctions follow rigidly exclusive paths. Everything that exists is influenced
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in some way by something else. If you can only pick the way out
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rightly. Loosely speaking, and in general, it may be said that all
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things cohere and adhere to each other somehow, and that the universe exists practically
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and reticulated or concatenated forms which make of it a continuous or integrated affair.
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Any kind of influence whatever, helps to make the world one, so far
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as you can follow it from next to next. You may then say that
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the world is one meaning in these respects, namely and just so far as
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they obtain, but just as definitely is it not one so far as they
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do not obtain. And there is no species of connection which will not fail.
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If instead of choosing conductors for it, you choose non conductors, you
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are then arrested at your very first step and have to write the world down
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as a pure many. From that particular point of view, if our intellect
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had been as much interested in disjunctive as it is in conjunctive relations, philosophy
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would have equally successfully celebrated the worlds disunion. The great point is to notice
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that the oneness and the manness are absolutely coordinate. Here. Neither is primordial
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or more essential or excellent than the other. Just as with space, who
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separating of things seems exactly on a par with its uniting of them. But
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sometimes one function and sometimes the other is what come home to us. Most
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so in our general dealings with the world of influences. We now need conductors
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and now need non conductors, and wisdom lies in knowing which is which at
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the appropriate moment. Four. All these systems of influence or non influence may
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be listed under the general problem of the world's cautial unity. If the minor
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caucial influences among things should converge towards one common cautial origin of them in the
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past, one great first cause for all, that is, one might then
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speak of the absolute cautial unity of the world. God's fight on Creation's day
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has figured in traditional philosophy as such an absolute cause and origin. Transcendental idealism
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translating creation into thinking or willing to think, calls the divine act eternal rather
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than first. But the union of the many here is absolute. Just the
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same the many would not be save for the one. Against this notion of
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unity of origin of all, there has always stood the pluralistic notion of an
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eternal self existing many in the shape of atoms, or even of spiritual units
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of some sort. The alternative has doubtless a pragmatic meaning. But perhaps as
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far as these lectures go, we had better leave the question of unity of
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origin unsettled. Five. The most important sort of union that obtains among things,
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pragmatically speaking, is their generic unity. Things exist in kinds. There
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are many specimens in each kind, and what the kind implies for one specimen,
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it implies also for every other specimen of that kind. We can easily
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conceive that every fact in the world might be singular, that is, unlike
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any other fact and soul of its kind. In such a world of singulars
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our logic would be useless for logic works by predicating of the single instance what
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is true of all its kind. With no two things alike in the world,
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we should be unable to reason from our past experiences to our future ones.
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The existence of so much generic unity in things is thus perhaps the most
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momentous pragmatic specification or what it may mean to say the world is one.
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Absolute generic unity would obtain if there were one summumenus under which all things without
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exception could be eventually subsumed. Beings, thinkables, experiences would be candidates for
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this position. Whether their alternatives expressed by such words have any pragmatic significance or
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not is another question which I prefer to leave unsettled just now. Six.
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Another specification of what the phrase the world is one may mean is unity of
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purpose. An enormous number of things in the world subserve a common purpose.
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All the man made systems, administrative, industrial, military, or what not
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exist, each for its controlling purpose. Every living being pursues its own petcure
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juliar purposes. They cooperate according to the degree of their development in collective or
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tribal purposes, larger ends, thus enveloping lesser ones, until an absolutely single,
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final and climacteric purpose subserved by all things without exception, might conceivably be
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reached. It is needless to say that their pearances conflict with such a view.
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Any resultant, as I said in my third lecture, may have been
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purposed in advance, but none of the results we actually know in this world
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have, in point of fact, been purposed in advance. In all their
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details, men and nations start with a vague notion of being rich, or
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great or good. Each step they make brings unforeseen chances into sight and shuts
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out older vistas, and the specifications of the general purpose have to be daily
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changed. What is reached in the end may be better or worse than what
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was proposed, but it is always more complex and different. Our different purposes
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also are at war with each other. Where one can't crush the other out,
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they compromise, and the result is again different from what anyone distinctly proposed
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beforehand. Vaguely and generally, much of what was purposed may be gained,
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but everything makes strongly for the view that our world is incompletely unified teleologically,
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and is still trying to get its unification better organized. Whoever claims absolute teleological
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unity, saying that there is one purpose that every detail of the universe subserves
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dogmatizes at his own risk. Theologians who dogmatize thus find it more and more
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impossible as our acquaintance with the warring interests of the world's parts grows more concrete,
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to imagine what the one climactic purpose may possibly be like. We see,
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indeed, that certain evils minister to alterior goods, that the bitter makes
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the cocktail better, and that a bit of danger or hardship puts us agreeably
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to our trumps. We can vaguely generalize this into the doctrine that all the
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evil in the universe is but instrumental to its greater perfection. But the scale
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of the evil actually in sight defies all human tolerance and transcendental idealism in the
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pages of a Bradley or a Royce brings us no farther than the Book of
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job did. God's ways are not our ways, So let us put our
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hands upon our mouth. A god who can relish such superfluities of horror is
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no god for human beings to appeal to. His animal spirits are too high.
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In other words, the absolute, with his own purpose, is not
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the manlike god of common people. Seven. Esthetic union among things also obtains,
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and is very analogous to the ideological union. Things tell a story.
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Their parts hang together so as to work out a climax. They play into
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each other's hands expressively. Retrospectively, we can see that although no definite purpose
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presided over a chain of events, yet the events fell into a dramatic form,
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with a start, a middle, and a finish. In point of
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fact, all stories end, and here again, the point of view of
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a many is that more natural one to take the world is full of partial
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stories that run parallel to one another, beginning and ending at odd times.
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They mutually interlace and interfere at points. But we cannot unify them completely in
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our minds. In following our life history, I must temporarily turn my attention
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from my own. Even a biographer of twins would have to press them alternately
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upon his reader's attention. It follows that whoever says that the whole world tells
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one story utters another of those monistic dogmas that a man believes at his risk.
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It is easy to see the world's history pluralistically as a rope of which
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each fiber tells a separate tale. But to conceive of each cross section of
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the rope as an absolutely single fact, and to sum the whole longitudinal series
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into one being living an undivided life, is harder. We have, indeed,
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the analogy of embryology to help us. The microscopist makes a hundred flat
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cross sections of a given embryo and mentally unites them into one solid whole.
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But the great world's ingredients, so far as they are beings, seem like
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the robes fibers, to be discontinuous crosswise, and to cohere only in the
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longitudinal direction followed in that direction, they are many. Even the embryologists,
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when he follows the development of his object, has to treat the history of
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each single organ in turn. Absolute esthetic union is thus another barely abstract ideal.
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The world appears as something more epic than dramatic. So far, then
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we see how the world is unified by its many systems, kinds, purposes,
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and dramas. That there is more union in all these ways than openly
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appears. Is certainly true. That there may be one sovereign purpose, system,
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kind, and story is is a legitimate hypothesis. All I say here
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is that it is rash to affirm this dogmatically without better evidence than we possess
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at present. End of Lecture four, Part one,